Jake

Nobody, we do them ourselves. So er, £0

To be fair, it was not a case of us saying "you can" in any way whatsoever, we discussed with the staff how much space they felt they needed. They came up with the 200mb figure, which we then agreed with. They could of said 2 Gb, but they didnt, they asked for 200mb. As for your post about only a minority using the laptops for non school related stuff. Well that is a very subjective topic, it will and does vary from school to school. That might well be the case at your school, but at our school, on the last laptop checkover, nearly every single one of them had installed their own software, most commonly shopping/holiday related software and very often games for their children/grandchildren etc. Like you say "your experience is most use it for work", I wish that was the case here, but sadly its not, its quite the contrary. At least as far as I know the games Civilisation 4 , Quake and Command and Conquer (to name but 3 which were found last time round), arent part of the national curriculum

I really shouldnt have bid on that £110,000 giant chocolate elephant on ebay

The spots have all dried up now, gone a bit scabby, so hopefully that means we are through the worst of it. She has lost so much weight over the last 5 days too as a result of it, everything she ate just came straight back up , so she has barely eaten. Just looking forward to them going and getting her back to her normal healthy self again now

Yeah the laptop drive. Does the management software allow the creation of partitions? And would it then hide the new partitions too? Our laptops restrict the staff from seeing/using the C drive, which is why we created a new partition and have the quota space on the new partition. Of course, if your management software hides that too, that would be a bit of a snag

We created a seperate partition on the harddrive and enabled Quota Management on the partition, then we set it to an agreed amount, after talking to some staff about how much space they need to use. They settled on 200mb as a workspace.

We had similar issues, staff wanted to be able to save stuff locally on the laptops (often upon investigation this actually turned out to be games for their young relatives, and in one case, porn) , when we took away their rights to save on the laptop drive and issued them with usb sticks they kicked up a right stink about it. Saying the laptops were useless etc etc, that the usb sticks kept breaking, which was amazing considering that I have had usb sticks for years and years without one breaking. God knows what they were doing to them to get them snapped. In the end we, just this week, implemented disk quotas on the laptops, giving them a quota of 200mb on the hard drive in which they could store their "work". Large enough to fit alot of documents, small enough to prevent games being installed. Still amazes me the stuff they put on the laptops, for some reason they think that when they are issued with a laptop, that it ceases to be the schools property and is "theirs"

Yeah, we are going with setting up a small, and we mean small , quoted area of the drives as a save space. That is covering us against the people who say their USB sticks keep breaking etc , but not giving them enough of the hard drive to whack games and lord knows what else on

As long as I am not being the redshirt security guy!

We use NOD32 on vista and xp here. Straight away it picked up some stuff which our Nortons hadnt found, some of it which had been loitering there for over 6 months

The sheer level of her bitterness and venom towards IT folk is astounding. Frankly its also quite demoralizing. Reading the things she says about what I do as a job choice actually makes me feel worthless. To think that there are people who have such hatred towards what I do as a career really makes a part of me just want to jack it all in.

Yeah, got the right word there, Helpless. You do really feel that way. I'm hoping it all passes swiftly too, though I suspect I have another week of it to go yet.

, Friday evening, and my little Bethany had some spots appear, by Sunday she was covered, literally covered from head to foot in festering red spots. Yup...my poor 13month old has been struck with chickenpox. Ridiculous that in 2007 we still get chickenpox, but nevertheless she has it. Conveniently I had monday booked off, which given my lack of sleep since friday is just as well. I think I have managed a total of 8 hours sleep since friday. No amount of calamine lotion or piritan syrup seems to abate her itching. She whines in discomfort virtually non stop all through the night, and all in all she looks terribly miserable, which for a 13 month old who previously constantly grinned, laughed and smiled is very noticeable. I guess it could be next weekend before the pox has finally gone, people continually say to me "better to have it now than later", true that might be, but it sure doesnt feel like it on 8 hours of sleep in 4 days and a distraught little one !

But that doesnt help if policies are made in between elections, you cant backward vote someone out of office if they later decide to do something you disagree with. Just look at the stuff Labour has brought in that I disagree with. Well..short of revolution that is. Not to mention that since when is an elected government elected by the majority? Frankly its been decades since I last recall any government (US or UK), being elected by the majority of its actual populace. So no..a majority of people did not put those people in power, and thus a majority of people do not support a decision by proxy

Again, to be fair, that doesnt indicate how the people think, it indicates how the government think. I would hate someone to say that any of Blairs policies reflect on how I personally think

To be fair localzuk, I think the US is a bit too big of a country to base a judgement of the entire country on what some relatives in one place in the country say, for instance, I also have relatives there, and I have even spent some years there myself, and I would wager that for every bit of anecdotal evidence you have I have first hand evidence to the contrary. The US is such a big and varied place that there are examples of all sorts of patriotic and non patriotic extremities in it. On the whole, I still admire their level of patriotism. Compared to here in the UK , I think its a whole different level. Here, I dont know of a single person in real life who actually says they are proud to be English, nearly all in fact say quite the opposite

I must admit, there is alot of things wrong with the US people, but one thing I certainly do admire them on, and cant fault them on, is their level of patriotism. Rightly or wrongly (depending on your viewpoint), they certainly are proud of their country and proud to be american (for the most part)

I'd settle for that, humanity long ceased being worthy of having this planet anyway

Well to be honest, thats a pretty pointless question to ask me. I have no idea if I could pull the trigger, until its a situation I am actually in. I would like to think I could pull the trigger, but that doesnt mean I would when actually stood in that position. I could say yes, I could say no, but both answers would be meaningless because its impossible to predict how I would actually act in that moment. The guy I work with spent years in the army as well, but he never had to actually pull a trigger and shoot someone dead, I expect I could ask him the same question, and even though he has been in the army he most likely couldnt answer with 100% assuredness. All I can say is that I would *hope* I could, I have an ability which some friends of mine detest in me, and some , in certain situations, are envious of in me. I am able to totally switch off any emotions at all, literally I turn completely cold. Of course, I have never been on a battlefield, so I have no idea if it would work in that situation, but certainly in the event of the death of a family member I am able to feel no grief whatsoever by simply sticking it in "cold storage". Its difficult to describe without spending a few years getting to know me, mostly I am insanely jovial and clownlike, but my closest friends who have known me for decades insist that the look in my eyes gives them shivers at times. One friend of mine who I've known since we were 7 describes looking into my eyes at times as looking at "evil". Mind you, thats usually after we have been down the pub Could I pull a trigger? I dont know...Al Capone once said every man was a virgin until he had taken another mans life. /shrug It should be said that I am in no way a pacifist, I believe in capital punishment and am a firm believer in an eye for an eye. My clowning is my balance, if it werent for that, I would probably be a serial killer by now. Anyway, difficult question to answer, I guess the most honest answer to the question of whether I would still feel that way if I was stood there holding the gun, is... I dont know, I have no way of knowing that until it happens.

now i'm confused

That would be wonderful, sadly we have hit a snag in regards to our staff AUP, the head refuses to make the staff have to sign the AUP. So of course , there is nothing to stop them turning around when its brought up, and say "I never saw any AUP" Frustrating to say the least

Dont you get issues with them installing games and what not on the laptops that way?

The offline files would work I suspect...if only we could get the staff to actually bring their laptops into school regularly.

Hehe..nah its ok, I am not a genocidal maniac, I just see war with a coldblooded logic See..I should have kept quiet, now its gone and tainted the jolly clown image of me that everyone had !

As I say, I have a somewhat unique outlook on war. I do indeed condone the killing of anyone of the enemy nation. Man , woman or child. Take world war 1 and 2 for example, how many children from world war 1 grew up to be SS officers in ww2. Take the complexities of modern warfare instead if you like, how many armed children killed soldiers in vietnam? or indeed in the current middle east, how many children carry arms and have killed soldiers? Its not so easy these days to tell the "innocent" child in a war from the not-so innocent. As for my offspring, of course I wouldnt like it, but I think I could understand the logic behind it. I would expect my enemy to do as much damage to my nation as they could. Civilian killing makes sense to me, its not the military who make the weapons in a war, its the civilians (much like how the american military production rates were of such benefit in ww2), kill those civvies, and it hampers the military production. Like I say though, I am different in that view to most others, and I understand thats it not a very "correct" view.